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"Ok, so I want to make a film in which a guy tries to escape from a building, cuts open a man's stomach and uses his intestines to bungee jump from a window to a lower floor.......Can I? Pretty please? With sugar on top?"

A fun tribute to the exploitation B-movies of old, Machete represents one of Robert Rodriguez's better efforts in recent memory, with enjoyably silly and over-the-top plotting and action sequences, lightning-fast pacing, stylish direction, and a committed cast.

This is what I like. Just a bit of over the top, awesome action fun with an excellent all around cast. For what it tries to be and what it does, it does it absolutely fantastically - it's hilarious and made me fangasm only just less than I'd say the most fangasmic film of all time, V For Vendetta. Of course it's nowhere near as good, but it's as damn well entertaining.

The action is some of the best, gory, over the top and inventive and the direction is great - even though before I've criticised Rodrigues's style. This has changed my mind. It looks great and just is great, it flows brilliantly which contributes…

After debuting as a mock trailer before Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror, Machete was fast tracked to being a proper theatrical film which operates under a similar tone and approach. I enjoyed Planet Terror a whole lot, but Machete ironically feels a lot less sharp than its forerunner.

On a purely mindless level this is a serviceable action flick. Set-pieces pack a punch and the plot is reasonably tongue in cheek. But it never really gets to go wild like Planet Terror does. If Rodriguez was aiming for authenticity then I guess this was a success since it feels like it could have been made in the '70s or '80s for the most part, pulling from exploitation films and action flicks…

Seen in preparation for Machete Kills. I have a soft spot for Rodriguez in his pseudo-grindhouse mode, and there's sporadic fun to be had here, though the useless plot keeps getting in the way. Trejo refuses to wink, which helps enormously. At the very least, the film establishes a useful redefinition of Chekhov's law: If somebody mentions the length of the large intestine for no particular reason...